Haven
by Wallwalker
Summary: A few moments in Barret Wallace's life, and other fics relating to him and the way he changed things. [Ficlets. OGC.]
1. Haven

_Haven_

---

Barret hated Midgar, hated just about everything about it. He didn't want to hate it, but he could barely seem to stop himself anyway.

He hated it because of the smell, a nasty stew of rotting metal, urine, blood and Planet only knew what else. He hated the sound the rain made when it rushed down the old pipes from the Plate, a constant gurgling that never failed to keep him awake at night. He hated the moans and wails of the poor bastards who'd slipped between the cracks, just like everyone in those forsaken slums, no one left to give a shit.

He hated the way it made him feel, the way he'd wake up with his mouth tasting like shit in an old sewer. He hated how the place made his arm itch constantly, and he couldn't scratch it; the damned thing wasn't even _there_ anymore.

But he was there, sittin' at the bar in a quiet place in Sector 7, and he wasn't going anywhere. Midgar was the sick, rotten heart of Shinra, and Shinra was the parasite that was sucking the life out of the Planet. He knew what he had to do. He couldn't kill a parasite by cutting off its fingers; he had to go right for the heart and the guts and the brains, blow 'em up and keep the bastards from ever building them again.

He looked up as Tifa walked over to him, and muttered a thank-you as she handed him a bottle of beer. Good stuff, too - black-market booze from the Plate, the kind of stuff you didn't get in the slums without really paying for it. He wondered once in a while how Tifa managed to get it so easily.

She stuck around, pulling a rag out of her apron and wiping down the counter. "What's on your mind, Barret?" she asked.

He smiled grimly. "Jus' the usual. Thinkin' how nice it'll be when we bring this city down."

Tifa glanced around nervously - he thought she would trust him by now; he wouldn't say shit like that if anyone else was around. "Yeah," she said. Then, looking around more wistfully, "I'll miss this place, though. The rest of it can burn, but... I guess I like it here."

Barret quietly agreed. "Yeah, well, if we pull this off, we'll find somewhere else. Hell, I'll build th' place myself if I have to."

"Barret, please," she said, laughing at him.

"I ain't jokin'," he said. "I'll get out there and start layin' bricks if ya want." _This's the only place I've been in years where I ain't feelin' like trash,_ he added mentally. _It's the only place here worth savin', if I could do it._

Tifa shook her head and put her towel back in the apron. "Thanks, Barret." She smiled at him - a real smile, not her hey-buddy-do-you-want-a-drink? smile - and patted him on the shoulder before walking away.

Barret smiled back after she'd gone, when he knew she wasn't looking. "It's nothin'," he said to nobody. "Nothin' I wouldn't do."


	2. Never Changed

_Never Changed_

_ --- _

Barret had seen an awful lot of changes in his lifetime. He'd seen his home, once a comfortable mining village, become all but a ghost town. He had seen Shinra rise to power, then fall back down again. Midgar, Shinra's crowning city and the thing they'd convinced themselves would last forever, had been reduced to a pile of ashes and twisted metal. Dozens of Mako reactors had popped up across the world, then abandoned and demolished again.

Cosmo Canyon had never changed, though. Barret was convinced that even if the rest of the Planet had been destroyed, somehow it would've just floated away into space and hung there, untouched forever.

It was some place. He still remembered the first time he'd really seen it, when they'd finally let him leave his bed and took him up the mountain so he could get the best view. Jessie standing beside him, grinning widely as he stared at the wild, primitive beauty of rugged red stone. Everything here was so close to nature, as if the Lifestream was flowing right under the place and infusing everything with its energy. It was all so alive and vibrant, and made the dull empty noise of cities like Midgar so much harder to bear.

He was convinced that anyone could become some kind of sage, just by living in Cosmo Canyon - the knowledge seeps in and gathers, even if you don't study it. It's like breathing; you can't help but take in what's around you. The Midgar slums were full of dead sounds, fear and hate and bitterness. He'd spent too much time there, he thought, got his head invaded by the bullshit... he'd gone there to help them and had almost turned himself into one of them, had almost forgotten his purpose.

That was why he was there now. He'd almost lost himself after Myrna died, and it was in Cosmo Canyon that he'd found what he'd lost. Maybe he could find it all again now, or at the very least find some kind of stability. Watching empires and cities fall all around him hadn't done much for his peace of mind, even though he'd been convinced that some of them needed to be destroyed. It was very hard for him not to look over his shoulder at every opportunity, wondering what was going to change next.

Whatever else change was, he thought with a sigh, it sure as hell wasn't easy. Part of him just kept wishing for things to be like they'd been once before, a long time ago. He missed being that big, friendly miner who'd fallen in love with a girl with big, soft brown eyes. He missed drinking with his best friend, an alert man with tousled hair who kept talking about how much he wanted to be a father.

But that was then. And regardless of where the time had gone, it wasn't coming back. Too many people were dead, and he wasn't one of them.

---


	3. Trust

_Trust_

---

"Do you trust him, Barret?"

Barret opened his eyes and looked over at Tifa, who was still sitting on the other side of the huge campfire. She was staring at him, her face utterly blank and her eyes filled with something he couldn't identify. Her injured leg was resting by the fire, and her good leg was curled up to her chest; she'd wrapped her arms around it and pulled it close to her. She looked oddly childlike in that pose, with the firelight flickering on her face and her long legs.

Barret looked away. Of all the questions she could've asked him... "Do I trust who?" he hedged. "That old guy? Sure I-"

"You know who I mean," she interrupted.

Yeah, he knew. That was why he didn't get it; why was she askin' him?

They were alone by the sacred fire, the one that the people in Cosmo Canyon always kept burning. Yuffie had run off a while ago, probably off to bother someone about martial arts or Materia. Then Cloud, Aeris and Red - or whoever the hell he was now - had gone off to some cave or another, something about Red's father... Barret might've gone, but he hadn't felt like fightin' any more that night, not when he'd finally come somewhere that felt like home. And Tifa had pushed herself too hard on the way there; her knee was botherin' her, and she needed to rest. Aeris had been fussing over it off and on for almost the whole day.

And now Tifa was askin' him a question like that. He wanted to ignore it, or just say he didn't want to answer, but he and Tifa had been friends for years now. He had to tell her the truth; she deserved that much.

"No," he said slowly. "Guess I don't." He waited for a second after that, watching Tifa. He expected her to say something in the kid's defense, or at least to look ticked off about it. He didn't expect her to just sort of nod and keep watching him like she was waiting for him to finish.

"I mean, it ain't that he's weak. Kid's one hell of a fighter," he finally continued, when the silence got to be too much for him. "When he says he's got your back, he means it."

"So what is it?"

"It's... look, I dunno how to explain it right. But it's kinda like this." He stood up and stretched, and walked over to sit next to Tifa. She didn't object; she just kept watching him, staring at his face so hard that Barret found himself wondering what she was really seeing there. "When Marlene gets scared, she likes to fake it like she's not, you know? She thinks I ain't scared of anything, and that don't want her to be scared either. So she starts talkin' like me, puffin' herself up a little. It's kind of cute, 'slong as she watches her mouth."

Tifa smiled slightly. "I've seen her do that before when you were away. Once I had to threaten to wash her mouth out with soap."

"Yeah, see? She pretends she's somebody else so that she doesn't have to admit that _she's_ scared." He took a deep breath. "And that's... well, that's th' same feelin' I get from Cloud. Like he's pretendin' to be somebody else, and deep down inside he's so scared that he doesn't know up from down or right from wrong. And that means I can't trust 'im, 'cuz it's hard as hell to trust a guy who won't even tell you who he really is."

Tifa sighed and closed her eyes - she still didn't look angry, though. She just looked sad. "Thank you, Barret. I'm... I'm glad you told me the truth."

"I wouldn't lie to ya, Tifa. You know that." He patted her on the shoulder awkwardly. "But why'd you ask me somethin' like that? I thought you already knew."

"Yeah, I guess I did." She looked up at him and forced a wan smile. "I asked you because you're my friend, and I knew I could trust you. And I needed to know something else..."

Barret blinked. "What?"

"I needed to know if I was the only one who felt that way about him."

---


	4. Her Own Time

_Her Own Time  
_ (AU.)

---

Tifa isn't sure how she ended up in Midgar.

She remembers Nibelheim burning, and Sephiroth slashing her across the chest, and then waking up in a dirty hospital room as if she'd always been there. Wherever she'd come from, now she was just another piece of human refuse in the slum, with a scar on her chest that could've healed if she'd had the money to have it fixed, and others scars that are far beyond healing.

She keeps her eyes, mouth and ears shut, doesn't listen to her patrons when they complain about the corporation. She pays her dues and a few bribes on top of that, and she doesn't trust anyone for a second, because there's no one out there worth trusting.

Once upon a time, when she'd just arrived, she'd hated Shinra, and had wanted to fight them any way she could. But now she's too tired and too hopeless, because she's never met anyone who would actually be brave enough to stand up to Shinra when they retaliated. None of the handful of resistance groups and freedom fighters out there are worth the time it takes to say their names; she's heard about enough executions and murders to know that it's easy to talk but hard to get anything done.

When she overhears some guy from the train station talking about a sick blond kid he'd seen lying in the gutter that morning, muttering things that he doesn't want to repeat, she just sighs and turns away. What difference would helping someone like that make? She knows that everyone in that bar might end up that way eventually, so for now she keeps her head down and does her own time.

---

_Note: This one is a bit different - it's not about Barret so much as it is about the absense of Barret and how that would've changed things. Barret is important, darn it._


	5. Sympathy

_Sympathy_  
(Barret/Tifa)

---

Barret tries not to think too hard about their friendship. It's easier that way.

It's tough, though, since Tifa's always happy and caring and always there for him, always visible at least out of the corner of his eye. Always standin' near him, ready to grab his arm and tell him to calm _down,_ remember what Marlene would say if she knew how mad he was. ("Papa's a grumpy bear!" she'd shout cheerfully, and the thought of that never fails to embarrass him into behaving.) Always watching his back as he watches hers. Always standing next to him at the bar when he needs someone to talk to, someone who'll give him a beer and a real smile and a sympathetic ear.

He tries very, _very_ hard not to let himself make comparisons, too - tries not to think about when his old man died and Myrna stayed up with him and sat next to his bed all night and held his hand. Tifa's not like his dead wife. Tifa's younger and stronger, but he can see that blank look in her eyes that he's seen in the mirror, and he wonders at it.

He's thought about asking; he thinks that she'd tell him. But he and Tifa both know better than to prod too much at a scar, physical or mental; old scars never heal, even after so many years. They both know more about scars than any person has a right to know... at least, he thinks she does, because she hasn't asked him about the past either. She knows it's there, but she has never pressed him for it, and he doesn't think that she ever will.

Barret tries not to think too hard about this friendship, because when he does, the thoughts get away from him, and he starts wondering if "friendship" is the right word, or what other names might be better, and when he starts going down that road, it's hard as hell to get back. So he takes what he can, takes that warmth and closeness and affection, and he's grateful for what he gets.

It wouldn't pay to want more than he oughta have, anyway; he learned that in a fire, a real long time ago.


End file.
